


Celeste Wants to be a Star the Way a Violin Wants to Be a Tree

by zagspect



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, various other nightwings are here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:34:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27569122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zagspect/pseuds/zagspect
Summary: Returning to the stars is one thing, finding our way home is entirely different. For once, Celeste finds herself in the audience.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Celeste Wants to be a Star the Way a Violin Wants to Be a Tree

**Author's Note:**

> this is a repost from 2018 tumblr because i finally got an ao3. it's still one of my favorite things ive ever written. enjoyyy

It hasn’t even been a whole week since Celeste fluttered open her eyes and cast off her return to the stars like it was a prison sentence, and here she is at some table in some building listening to some musicians on a _rumor_ that she might see him. If not for a gaggle of old Nightwings in the front row she’d have gone home by now, honestly, but there’s no reason for any of them to show up if he wasn’t going to make an appearance, certainly not all together like this, and if even Sandalwood made the effort that’s as good as a guarantee.

Celeste is holding a glass of water because she has to hold something. Her mandolin was left behind so no one could mistake her for someone who wants to get onstage but now it feels worse than if she’d shown up naked. She feels like she’d forgotten to bring one of her legs.

And there he is, the last performer. Tariq, white lute in hand.

“Good evening,” he tells the crowd and his soft voice carries through the entire room. The Underking’s trick, as only Celeste and he know.

“Those who know me may have been worried during my hiatus over the past two years. I needed to find a new direction. I hope these songs prove that I have started off on a path I can be happy with.”

There’s a cheer from the front where all the Nightwings are crowded, and small nods through the room from a few people who’d passed by him performing for a rite or blackwagon without realizing it was anything more. Celeste grips her glass tighter. 

Blasphemous words, those are. And, two years? What did it take him to leave the stars again, a month? Turning his back on his duty. As it is she’s itching to chew him out, his stance all wrong, the wrong side of the stage, the wrong color cloak and hat, thats no way to stand in performance. She holds her tongue. The rules don’t matter anymore. All their meaning’s gone to wherever the stars and the fire are hiding out.

Two years… she was asleep for two years. The glass is starting to crack under her grip. 

Celeste looks at him strumming his lute and singing about the places he’s explored while the Scribes think he’s sleeping and feels ill. Suddenly she’s glad she left her mandolin at home where it doesn’t have to witness this misuse. She wonders if he ever couldn’t stand the sight of his lute, and she wonders if he’s already felt everything she’ll feel for the next two years.

The next song starts up and it’s a love song and Celeste is startled that it’s not about her. Something else she blinked and missed. He finally got over her and she missed it entirely.

Tariq is swaying with his music so he may as well be jumping up and down and smashing his lute in half on the stage that’s how excited he is. He sings out a line that would make Soliam Murr blush and cover his ears and then the music stops and it’s the first face he’s made all night that Celeste can understand.

It’s the look of crossing a line. _Ive done my share too_ , she thinks. _I’m no saint either_. Kisses through the gate with a particularly brazen exile or absentminded wishing that gets quickly backtracked. The edge of admitting she’s lonely before remembering she wasn’t put here to be lonely.

But there is no bolt of lightning, no flame of punishment, not even a leak in the roof, as the heralds lock eyes and the crowd shifts uncomfortably in the pause and Tariq races his fingers across the strings again, kid-in-a-candy-store grin, can’t believe he got away with it is the smile on his face.

If this is permission, or at least the absence of punishment, then she stares into her glass and whispers “I’m lonely” and cries for the second time in her life. The Scribes plucked her from the sky where she was content and left her with rules to a game no one plays anymore and a mountain you can see the world from the peak of but never visit, and a love that went sour too fast, and said well if you’re good and follow the rules to the letter then you can get dusty on the shelf until we need you again. Bitterly, she realizes that she could make a song out of all that emotion. Hell, give her a week, she’ll have an album. She can’t stop herself. It’s all there is.

It’s over too soon and he’s down from the stage and the ex-Nightwings are crowding him, “You did UH MAY ZING”, the English word strange on their tongues. Celeste feels a momentary urge to run before they reach her- but where would she go? The sky is too small for her, her mountain is no longer home, she has outgrown everything but the wide wide world she could always see but never touch. They’ve all reached her now, gasping and cheering and “Celeste you came back I cant believe it look it’s Celeste!!!” so she stands up and shakes Tariq’s hand warmly and gives him her best practiced smile and prepares to take her first steps forward.


End file.
